The joy of turning turtle: Swimming with the wildlife of the Great Barrier Reef

RICHARD Green swims with the wildlife on the Great Barrier Reef.

A turtle off Lady Elliot island and Richard, right, gets ready to take the plunge [PH]

I've arrived on Lady Elliot Island in turtle season and have two days to swim with sea turtles and to see them lay their eggs along the beach. It was a 20-minute flight in a 13-seater prop plane from the Queensland town of Bundaberg before swooping onto the little grass strip. Within minutes I've checked in, found my room and am eager for a swim.

First though, a chirpy staff member tells me I need a "Turtle Briefing". So I sit on a wooden bench in an open-sided shelter by the Lady Elliot Island Resort restaurant and listen to an enthusiastic Colombian called Santiago. He uses the empty shell of a Green Turtle as a prop - literally a prop, leaning on it as he tells guests a few facts.

"These creatures live for about 80 years," he says. "They weigh up to 300 pounds, have been found up to 1,500 miles from where they were tagged, and they pre-date the dinosaurs.

"The males spend their whole lives at sea," he continues, "and until they reach their thirties so do the females. Then they come ashore every year to lay their eggs.

"And this..." he adds with a wide smile, patting the giant shell, "is what you should see tonight."

Staff are super friendly and in a jiffy kit me out with fins, mask and snorkel before directing me to the lagoon

Richard Green

Before the big event, I take an island tour, falling in with a gaggle of guests to follow guide Emma across the runway.

The grassy strip bisects the island, a 100-acre coral cay that has built up naturally from the sea. It's the southernmost island of the Great Barrier Reef; the northernmost point is a staggering 1,400 miles away, which is more than twice the length of the UK.

Emma asks us to guess how long it took to build the runway and a smart aleck child pipes up goadingly with "a day".

Disappointingly for him, and surprisingly for the rest of us, he's right - the original settlers were guano miners who stripped the island of trees. So when the airstrip was built in 1969 the 19th-century lighthouse was the only tall structure on the island. Now trees have been replanted to encourage birds and other wildlife.

At the end of the tour I retrace my steps across the runway, past the dive shack, between the restaurant and the briefing area, to my room. The resort - the only property on the island - looks more like a research institute, it's low rise with prefabricated whitewashed buildings and a small pool.

Staff are super friendly and in a jiffy kit me out with fins, mask and snorkel before directing me to the lagoon. The heat is tropical and the sun's light bounces intensely off the water. I dive in and warm water burbles in my ears.

Lady Elliot's turtle season is from November to March. Almost immediately I see a 4ft-long Green Turtle. Far from skittish, it manoeuvres its bulk to just below where I float. It has eyes like black marbles and instead of being spooked by my splashing, seems to enjoy my company.

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Encounters with wildlife for me usually involve long days spent seeing not very much, followed by a peek at something either very timid or very threatening.

Not so with turtles - you don't even need to scuba dive to get close. Wearing shells up to 5ft long, they're perfectly unmissable, plus they swim slowly and like hanging around shallow reefs. On other tropical islands the pace usually slows after lunch, guests left to recount who saw what fish or ate what.

On Lady Elliot in turtle season however, it's a different story. At night, knots of expectant guests spill from the restaurant/bar like members of a cult, their torches swaying over the sand. We're in search of turtles laying eggs.

We locate fresh tracks heading inland and follow the flipper prints, before coming upon a large female turtle lying in a sandy hollow.

In contrast to how she would have looked in the water, her shell now appears as a terrible burden and the gorgeous mosaic-like markings on her head and flippers are lost beneath a coating of sand.

She's dug a "laying chamber" with her rear fins and out pop the eggs, one, two, or even three at a time…I lose count at 60, but the norm is around a hundred, according to Santiago. They look lychee-like in texture and are ping-pong ball perfect.

Turning turtle myself, I look up at the dazzling dome of stars. Half an hour later, there's movement at the hollow, and the female starts dragging herself back to the sea with agonising heaves. I follow behind quietly, until at last she slips into the churning waves.

The hatchlings will make their dash to the water about eight weeks hence, and no doubt will have a new group of guests tickled pink too. I'll add that to my bucket list, but in the meantime, this trip has taught me that turtles are remarkable creatures. To my mind at least, I've now been walking and swimming with dinosaurs.